Educational Change through the Lens of Complexity Science: Changing Thinking for Changed Learners

Abstract

As education professionals work in times of exponential change, how they think is as important as what they do. Our thought processes frame our creations-and for hundreds of years that frame has been a linear, Newtonian paradigm. Due to advances in hard sciences, we now know that there are other ways of framing our thoughts and understanding our world, and that is through complexity science. Complexity science is a powerful metaphor to use in reviewing our common understandings of school systems and how to reform them to better serve students. This paper includes a primer of complexity science terms and then uses those terms as a lens on school systems for educational professionals pursuing change to meet the needs of the Net Generation of learners as we move into the Information Age. School reform is a phrase that belies the complexity of reforming an education system. Previous ways of thinking about schools and educational design have not led to the advances educational professionals hope for in our schools. Another way to conceptualize schools and how they might embrace change is through complexity science. This shift in understanding has already happened in the hard sciences, and has catalyzed a turn away from old Newtonian conceptualizations of how systems behave. Complexity science informs around notions of complex adaptive systems, initial conditions, attractor states, and bifurcation. These ideas can be used as metaphors for understanding education systems and changes within them, as well as the consistent themes that repeatedly play out in schools. A general overview of complexity science follows which describes the terms complex adaptive systems, initial conditions, attractor states, and bifurcation through the language of complexity science. These terms will be used as a metaphor through which education systems can be understood in a new way. And finally, the reader is challenged to think on one facet of the educational system through the lens of complexity.